It is my great pleasure to introduce you all to Olive Lui, born July 31st, 2016! We are incredibly excited to welcome her into our family and look forward to the lifetime of happiness that she'll bring.

'It passes by so quickly' is the overused cliché that we fully understood with Parker and we will cherish our time spent with both our amazing children. As I'll be quite busy, I want to thank all of our family and friends for all the well wishes and support. We are very lucky and hope that this news brings some joy to everyone who reads it :)

Though most people won't notice, I have broken my streak posting on every Monday and Friday. Though I am kind of disappointed, I have to admit it was going to happen eventually. With the responsibilities that come with a pregnant wife and a 2 year old, things have just been a little stretched. Even if it didn't happen now, life with a newborn is pretty demanding. I am sure this won't spell absolute doom for the blog, but it does give me an excuse to post a bit less regularly. When things settle in, I may set a regular post a week as deadlines (self imposed or not) generally equate to productivity. I have some big posts written up, and will get those up when I can.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the picture of my son G-Bear from fall last year. I bet you didn't know he was a gangsta.

Today I was in the car and the 1983 Talking Heads song 'Burning Down the House' came on. Despite the commercial success hitting in the top 10 at the time, their song lives in my memory as the remake by The Cardigans and Tom Jones. Just to recap, the song is a late 90s pop hit featuring The Cardigans and Tom Jones and is as delightfully silly as it sounds. The swingy pop beat is infectious and Tom Jones brings his Vegas crooning in full effect.

Released as a single on Tom Jones' album 'Reload', the track came out in 1999. I haven't seen the video in over a decade and forgotten how wonderfully weird it is. I am pleased to share this odd throwback to you over 15 years later.

Though the mash up era has come and gone, I kind of wonder when my interest in it stopped. One of the pinnacles of the mash up era hit with the song 'Boulevard of Broken Songs' by mash up DJ Party Ben. The California-based DJ worked on local radio with his half hour show 'Sixx Mixx' and built a name for himself with the rise of the mash up. Currently, Party Ben works at Pandora Radio working with dance and electronica.

'Boulevard of Broken Songs' was Party Ben's break out song and went viral on the internet pretty quickly. The track takes samples from 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams' by Green Day, 'Wonderwall' by Oasis, 'Writing to Reach You' by Travis, and 'Sing for the Moment' by Eminem which was later replaced with 'Dream On' by Aerosmith. The result is what all mash ups aim for: a hard driving hook-heavy song that mixes perfectly in key, tone, and tempo. I absolutely love this song and toss it on whenever I want to transport myself back to the early aughts.

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about tabletop games but my love of videogames hit hard recently and much of my focus has gone that way. Though I haven’t played tabletop games in a while, I have been itching for a board game night and will likely pull out the beautiful Tsuro board.

I personally tend to avoid overly complicated games and usually wind down my board game nights with something simple that everyone can play together. Tsuro has filled in this gap a lot and remains a favourite among my friends. Simple and interactive, Tsuro is a perfect example of elegant design. Players sail their ships onto a 7 x 7 square grid by laying tiles to set their path through the board. As the board gets filled with these tiles, players will inevitably cross paths and mess with each other’s route. Eventually, players will get eliminated as their boats get forced off the grid leaving the winner alone on the board. For an added bit of tension, ‘Tsuro of the Seas’ introduces dragons that randomly move around the board eating up player boats.

Tsuro is a great board game that requires very little teaching. Because it is so simple and interactive, it makes for the perfect game to introduce new people to designer board games or warming people up to more complex games.